Google Search Is Dying

"Pichai started at Google leading product management for the Google toolbar, a critically strategic product that enabled default search queries on different web browsers to go through Google and allow them to track browsing behavior to power the AdWords targeting engine. At the time, Internet Explorer was the "installed by default" incumbent for many users, while Firefox was the alternative browser of choice."

"Pichai identified a weakness in Google's strategy, and Chrome began as a defensive play against the established browsers to protect and grow Google's search business (which still generates much of the company's revenue)."

https://www.productplan.com/learn/sundar-pichai-product-mana...

"Sundar Pichai is the one who introduced the toolbar, which led to an increase in user searches. It was later merged with Chrome, which became the most used web browser in the world."

https://startuptalky.com/sundar-pichai-story/

""Most people here didn't want us to do a browser, so it was a little bit stealthy. Once we had it up and running, I remember showing it to Larry and Sergey - and even then there was a lot of scepticism." But Pichai got his way: Chrome was released in 2008 and now accounts for nearly 60% of the market, according to NetMarketShare, while Internet Explorer languishes on less than 16%."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/07/google-bo...

"You know how Google's the default search engine for many Web browsers? That was Pichai's work."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/08/11...

"Pichai's portfolio includes Chrome, Android, search, ad technology, maps, social,commerce and infrastructure."

https://web.archive.org/web/20150226215637/http//www.forbes....

"Ten years ago, the Indian-born Pichai, 42, was a product manager at Google, and his domain consisted of the search bar in the upper right corner of Web browsers. He then persuaded his bosses to wade into the browser wars with Chrome, which in time became the most popular browser on the Internet and led to the Chrome operating system that runs on a line of cheap laptops called Chromebooks."

"Android runs on 1.2 billion devices around the world. It drives users to the company's hugely profitable search engine and the ads on its maps service. Google search and maps are available on phones made by Apple and Microsoft, too, but Google pays those companies referral fees. The more people use Android, the more Google can keep that revenue to itself."

"Google distributes the latest versions free under the agreement that device makers will highlight profitable Google services-especially search and maps-while their own brands and services take a back seat."

"Pichai joined the small team working on Google's search toolbar. It gave users of Internet Explorer and Firefox, the dominant browsers at the time, easy access to Google search. He proposed that Google build its own browser and won the support of the company's co-founders, though he faced an objection from then-CEO Eric Schmidt, who thought that joining the browser wars would be an expensive distraction."

"Rubin had introduced it, but Pichai created an interdisciplinary team with the search group, which had voice search technology and algorithms that could discern what information might be most important to users. "Sundar helped me to formalize a relationship," says Johanna Wright, the product manager who runs Google Now. "Because search and Android sit in two different buildings, we ended up doing a people swap.""

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-24/googles-s...

Google Search no longer is a Search Engine. It's now aiming to be an answer engine.

That may sound like a distinction without a difference, but in practice the changes are profound.

With an answer engine, your goal is to find THE 1 correct answer. So your algorithm consistently refines and eliminate low "accuracy" results. If you reliably knew that only 5% of users found a certain response useful to their query, in an answer engine you get rid of that response because it's clearly "wrong".

In a search engine, however, you retain that response. In fact, you signal boost it, because it clearly shows that even though there is another answer that is chosen by say 90% of users, the 5% usage for the 2nd response indicates that even if it may not be the correct "answer" to the query, it's of value to folks, and is related to the query being searched.

An answer engine eliminates serendipitous connections, because almost by definition those connections are not the answer to the query being asked. A search engine not only doesn't punish a serendipitous connection, it seeks to surface it.